An apparatus and method is disclosed for introducing or removing fluids from a wellbore. The apparatus is suitably equipped for mounting on a mobile vehicle, such as a truck or trailer, or on a boat, such as a barge, so that it may be transported from site to site where it is needed.
Previously, treatments of oil and gas wells have entailed connecting together of pieces of pipe known as "iron" from the wellhead to the treating equipment which may consist of trucks and pumps, etc. For safety sake, this string of iron sometimes extends several hundreds of feet and in some cases must be staked securely to the ground when the treatment to be applied is to be carried out under substantial pressure, for example in excess of 500 psi. Hooking up to the well-head involves, in the case of a new well, working on the drilling table, often an unsafe and hazardous operation. Additionally, in the past each piece of iron had to be individually carried, connected, unconnected and reloaded. This has required substantial time, effort and has been accompanied by significant hazards.
The treatment of oil and gas wells has also been carried out through equipment known as "coil tubing". A small diameter pipe is actually inserted through a seal or diaphragm into the wellbore and run to a desired distance within the well and treating is then carried out. Such apparatus is extremely cumbersome and bulky and is not generally designed for the process of fracturing a subterranean formation. The small diameter tubing is not designed to deliver the large quantities of fluid at high rates necessary for such fracturing or at the pressures generally required. A description of coil tubing units for use in treating of wells may be found in Oil and Gas Journal, Jan. 13, 1964, pages 72-73.
In the construction industry, extendable booms have been mounted on the backs of trucks to permit cement slurries to be pumped through a conduit attached to the boom. In that fashion, cement can be delivered to a location which is elevated or which is at a distance from a road or path which would not otherwise be accessible from a standard cement "readimix" truck. Examples of such boom equipment are found in the brochure entitled "TITAN Concrete, Pumps Make the Tough Jobs Easy", bulletin No. CT-479 published by Challenge Cook Brothers. To the best of Applicant's knowledge, such cement boom equipment has not previously been adapted for hook up to gas or oil wells or for the operations to be performed on such wells.